Page II of 2007 Psychotronic News Links from Miqel.com - Quick Update:Its been a while since i've posted regularly ... been busy trying to keep things balanced at work and dealing with the slowdown (aka. recession) in the economy. I have been self-employed for the last 5 years doing internet related design, site development and marketing strategy and the past few months business has dropped off considerably and consequently i've been steadily creeping into debt & am just now starting to freak out about it.As an artist it's not really in my nature to promote 'myself', I just like to do the work I do without becoming yet another ad. but perhaps i can look at it as promoting not 'self' but a set of intellectual attributes and skills which I am willing to engage in a financial exchange ... so
To hire a mutant genius with a long list of references and successful projects to assist in your
web content development, design, Flash animation or marketing project - click here for my work history and skillset.http://www.miqel.com/resume/index.html

2007 LINKS Part II - Eclectic Bogaloo: Catching up on Meme Sharing ... In 2007 I saved hundred of links to interesting stuff I found online, for eventual use in postings on Miqel.com. However i never seemed to "have time" or the psychic energy necessary to get these up on my site. Here's some food for thought with brief commentary and/or related links. I also have a growing list of links i've saved in 2008, but first things first. Here are a couple dozen articles, images, ideas, discoveries and mysteries I noticed in 2007, many of which might be interesting to mutants, futants, neophiles, weirdos (and even 'normals') of all types.

Groovy Discoveries:

Astronomers Find Gaping Hole In The Universehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070823164846.htm
ScienceDaily (Aug. 23, 2007) — University of Minnesota astronomers have found an enormous hole in the Universe, nearly a billion light-years across, empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies and gas, as well as the mysterious, unseen "dark matter." While earlier studies have shown holes, or voids, in the large-scale structure of the Universe, this new discovery dwarfs them all.
"Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size," said Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota. "What we've found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the Universe," Williams said.Comment:I love mega macroscopic structures ... galactic superclusters, literally clouds of galaxies - it's fun to think about, but i have no idea what the implications of this discovery are for cosmology or astrophysics. (~miqel)

Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that "glow in the dark".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4605202.stm
They claim that while other researchers have bred partly fluorescent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are green through and through. The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo. The researchers hope the pigs will boost the island's stem cell research, as well as helping with the study of human disease.
In daylight, the researchers say the pigs' eyes, teeth and trotters look green
. Their skin has a greenish tinge. In the dark, shine a blue light on them and they glow torch-light bright.

Green pig gives birth to
first generation of glowing pigletshttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22563650/
BEIJING - A cloned pig whose genes were altered to make it glow fluorescent green has passed on the trait to its young, a development that could lead to the future breeding of pigs for human transplant organs, a Chinese university reported.
The glowing piglets’ birth proves transgenic pigs are fertile and able to pass on their engineered traits to their offspring, according to Liu Zhonghua, a professor overseeing the breeding program at Northeast Agricultural University.

AND CATS TOO ... in Red !

South Korean scientists create glowing cats using modified gene
http://inventorspot.com/articles/scientists_create_glowinthedark__9191SEOUL, South Korea - South Korean scientists have cloned cats that glow red when exposed to ultraviolet rays, an achievement that could help develop cures for human genetic diseases, the Science and Technology Ministry said. Three Turkish Angora cats were born in January and February through cloning with a gene that produces a red fluorescent protein that makes them glow in dark. One died at birth, but the two others survived, the ministry said.
This picture, taken through a special filter in a dark room, shows a cat, left, possessing a red fluorescent protein that makes the animal glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet rays, appearing next to a normal cloned cat.

Pic: Rats with GFP expressing in Bones only ... trippy looking!

Green Fluorescent Protein is a proof-of-concept “tag” used by genetic engineers to track the propagation of a protein sequence through an organism. By planting a GFP tag in a larger protein sequence or gene, its progress can be tracked much in the same way a software debugger might track information rippling through a network or a database.

What’s fun about GFP is, well, its visual interface, if you will: put the organism under blue lights, and the incorporated GFP-tagged proteins will glow green — a very visceral, not-at-all abstract report from the biochemical engines. GFP can be introduced via breeding or viral vector.

"Here, 100ft down and hidden from public view, lies an astonishing secret - one that has drawn comparisons with
the fabled city of Atlantis and has been dubbed 'the Eighth Wonder of the World' by the Italian government.

For weaving their way underneath the hillside are nine ornate temples, on five levels, whose scale and opulence take the breath away.
Constructed like a three-dimensional book, narrating the history of humanity, they are linked by hundreds of metres of richly decorated tunnels and occupy almost 300,000 cubic feet - Big Ben is 15,000 cubic feet.

the 'Temples of Damanhur' are not the great legacy of some long-lost civilisation, they are the work of a 57-year-old former insurance broker from northern Italy who, inspired by a childhood vision, began digging into the rock.It all began in the early Sixties when Oberto Airaudi was aged ten. From an early age, he claims to have experienced visions of what he believed to be a past life, in which there were amazing temples.

Around these he dreamed there lived a highly evolved community who enjoyed an idyllic existence in which" all the people worked for the common good."

But it was only as he began a successful career as an insurance broker that he began to search for his perfect site. In 1977, he selected a remote hillside where he felt the hard rock would sustain the structures he had in mind.

A house was built on the hillside and Falco moved in with several friends who shared his vision. Using hammers and picks, they began their dig to create the temples of Damanhur - named after the ancient subterranean Egyptian temple meaning City of Light - in August 1978.

MagneBlocks™ Creative Magnetic Construction Playsethttp://www.magneblocks.com/home.cfm
from the site: "MagneBlocks™ are the leading educational magnetic construction toy
that
challenges the mind and allows for infinite creativity. It can be used to teach concepts like:

From a choice of eight unique shapes, children of all ages (adults too!) can combine the blocks into many shapes and structures of limitless possibilities, from simple forms like houses and animals, castles, and cars, to complex geometrical shapes, cityscapes and beyond.

Able to be combined with other magnetic systems, like the popular "sticks and balls", MagneBlocks™ contain more magnets per piece, offering many more ways to play.

Discover constructions you haven't even imagined as you explore the hours and hours of creative fun and mind-building of MagneBlocks™."

COGNITIVE SCIENCE

Brain's Visual Cortex Doesn't "Tell" All It Knows
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/05/010529070018.htmScienceDaily (May 31, 2001) — The print on a page may be too fine to read, but that doesn't mean your brain can't discern the pattern of lines. New research by scientists at the University of Minnesota and the University of California, San Diego has shown that neurons in the human visual cortex, a brain center that processes visual information, can respond to patterns of lines too fine for subjects to resolve.
The discovery contributes to the understanding of vision and has implications for the age-old question of consciousness.
The work will be published in the May 24 issue of Nature.
Everyone with normal vision can perceive patterns of lines up to a certain point.
But when the spacing of lines becomes too fine, the lines seem to disappear and only a uniform blur is seen."This is probably the first demonstration that visual cortical neurons are capable of resolving fine lines past the limits previously thought to exist," said Sheng He, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota and first author of the Nature paper. His coauthor is Donald MacLeod, a psychologist at UC San Diego.."

Comment:
I thought this was interesting. The more we discover - even about things considered fairly-well understood by physics, the more we see how simplistic our theories are. (~Miqel)

CREEPY COLLABORATIONS

The Weird Russian Mind-Control Research Behind a DHS Contract
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/09/mind_reading?currentPage=1
MOSCOW -- The future of U.S. anti-terrorism technology could lie near the end of a Moscow subway line in a circular dungeon-like room with a single door and no windows. Here, at the Psychotechnology Research Institute, human subjects submit to experiments aimed at manipulating their subconscious minds.

Elena Rusalkina, the silver-haired woman who runs the institute, gestured to the center of the claustrophobic room, where what looked like a dentist's chair sits in front of a glowing computer monitor. "We've had volunteers, a lot of them," she said, the thick concrete walls muffling the noise from the college campus outside. "We worked out a program with (a psychiatric facility) to study criminals. There's no way to falsify the results. There's no subjectivism." The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has gone to many strange places in its search for ways to identify terrorists before they attack, but perhaps none stranger than this lab on the outskirts of Russia's capital. The institute has for years served as the center of an obscure field of human behavior study -- dubbed psychoecology -- that traces it roots back to Soviet-era mind control research.

What's gotten DHS' attention is the institute's work on a system called Semantic Stimuli Response Measurements Technology, or SSRM Tek, a software-based mind reader that supposedly tests a subject's involuntary response to subliminal messages. pic at right:
The underlying premise of the technology is that terrorists would recognize a scrambled terrorist image like this one without even realizing it, and would be betrayed by their subconscious reaction to the picture.

Comment:
Can probably be created from WAY cheap with just a little DIY engineering and proper technical data.
Build your own when it (or the next plague) comes to your town ... especially good for people living in apartments or places with central air.
(~Miqel)

The JFK ArchivesMary Ferrell Foundation JFK
Assassination Records Archivehttp://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
The Mary Ferrell Foundation (MFF) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) foundation dedicated to truth and transparency in our government's response to national tragedies as well as encouraging the continued research of the controversial events surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy and its subsequent investigations.At over half a million pages of documents, government reports, books, essays, and hours of multimedia, The MFF hosts the largest digital archive of information on the case and its larger historical context."
Comment:
Did Oswald kill Kennedy with a single bullet fired form the 3rd story of the Texas school book depository? Not according to hundreds of eyewitnesses and declassified goverment documents from the Warren commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations Review board. All the docs are here ... Don't take my word for it, if you have some time read through the evidence and form your own conclusion.
(~Miqel)

"At the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology (LINV), about seven miles outside Florence, Italy, Mancuso and his team of nine work to debunk the myth that plants are low-life. Research at the modern building combines physiology, ecology and molecular biology.
"If you define intelligence as the capacity to solve problems, plants have a lot to teach us," says Mancuso, dressed in harmonizing shades of his favorite color: green. "Not only are they 'smart' in how they grow, adapt and thrive, they do it without neuroses. Intelligence isn't only about having a brain."
Plants have never been given their due in the order of things; they've usually been dismissed as mere vegetables. But there's a growing body of research showing that plants have a lot to contribute in fields as disparate as robotics and telecommunications."
In addition to studies on the effects of music on vineyards, the center's researchers have also published papers on gravity sensing, plant synapses and long-distance signal transmission in trees. One important offshoot of the research activity is an international symposium on plant neurobiology. Next year's meeting will be held in Japan.
"Biometrics can provide some of the most inspiring resources for us," he says. "Solutions found by nature that might not seem related to real engineering problems at first sight actually are related and give technical solutions."
"Plants communicate via chemical substances," Mancuso says. "They have a specific and fairly extensive vocabulary to convey alarms, health and a host of other things. We just have sound waves broken down into various languages"

Comment: Idealized images of today's future ... from the past!
Fun for looking at old models of today and tomorrow. `Miqel)"

TRAGIC BUT NOT VERY SURPRISING STORY - Another War Victim

Police could not find any fingerprints on Dr Kelly's 'suicide' knifehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=487627&in_page_id=1770Fresh doubts were raised over the suicide of Dr David Kelly after it emerged that no fingerprints were found on the knife he supposedly used to kill himself.
The Hutton Inquiry into the death of the Ministry of Defence weapons expert ruled that he slashed one of his wrists with a blunt garden knife and took an overdose of pills.
The lack of fingerprints is especially strange as police records also revealed the germ warfare expert was not wearing any gloves when he died – nor were any found at the scene of his death.
Mr Baker said: 'It is one of the things that makes me think Dr Kelly was murdered. 'The angle you pick up a knife to kill yourself – there would be fingerprints. Someone who wanted to kill himself wouldn't go to the lengths of wiping the knife clean of fingerprints. 'And wearing gloves would seem very odd when you are about to cut your own wrists. It is very strange.'Mr Baker is also suspicious about the cut to Dr Kelly's wrist.
It completely severed a tiny blood vessel called the ulnar artery, which is deep in the wrist and protected by nerves and tendons. It is highly unlikely anyone without a blood-clotting defect would bleed to death from a single cut to this artery. It would have required unusual force to cut through the tendons, particularly with a blunt gardening knife, and it would have been very painful.
To ascertain just how unusual the injury was, Mr Baker asked the Office of National Statistics how many people in the UK died in 2003 from a cut to the ulnar artery.He was told that Dr Kelly was the only one. The scientist was found dead in woodland near his home in Southmoor, Oxfordshire, in July 2003 after becoming trapped at the centre of a vicious war of words between the Government and the BBC.
His death came days after he was unmasked as the source of a Today programme report alleging Labour had 'sexed up' a dossier outlining the case for war in Iraq.
The document had famously claimed that Saddam Hussein could launch a nuclear or biological weapons strike on Britain within 45 minutes.

and more on the Kelly case ...

Iraq whistleblower Dr Kelly WAS murdered to silence him, says MPhttp://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23417404
Weapons expert Dr David Kelly was assassinated, an MP claims today.
Campaigning politician Norman Baker believes Dr Kelly, who exposed the Government's "sexed-up" Iraq dossier, was killed to stop him making further revelations about the lies that took Britain to war.
He says the murderers may have been anti-Saddam Iraqis, and suggests the crime was covered up by elements within the British establishment to prevent a diplomatic crisis.
The LibDem MP, who gave up his front bench post to carry out his year-long investigation, makes his claims in a book serialised exclusively in the Daily Mail today and next week.The official Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr Kelly ruled in 2004 that he slashed one of his wrists with a garden knife and took an overdose after being "outed" as the mole who revealed the flawed argument for invading Iraq. But Norman Baker is convinced the scientist was murdered.

He says he was told by a secret informant that British police knew about the plot but failed to act in time and that the death was later made to look like a suicide to prevent political and diplomatic turmoil.
The highly-respected MP's personal quest to uncover the truth about Dr Kelly's death was prompted by deep concerns over the circumstances surrounding the apparent suicide. He - and a group of eminent doctors - were greatly troubled by the evidence presented to Lord Hutton. They claimed medical evidence proved that the alleged method of suicide - the cutting of the ulnar artery in the wrist and an overdose of co-proxamol painkillers - could not have caused the scientist's death.

PHYSIOLOGY(another installment of "we know so much about so very little ....")

Researchers have discovered that the structure of human bones is vastly different than previously believed -- findings which will have implications for how some debilitating bone disorders are treated.

the characteristic toughness and stiffness of bone is predominantly due to the presence of specialized sugars, not proteins, as had been previous believed.Scientists have long held the view that collagen and other proteins were the key molecules responsible for stabilizing normal bone structure. That belief has been the basis for some existing medications for bone disorders and bone replacement materials.

At the same time, researchers paid little attention to the roles of sugars (carbohydrates) in the complex process of bone growth.
(the research)"may also strengthen the rationale for the current popularity of over-the-counter joint and bone pain remedies such as glucosamine and chondroitin, which are based on GAG sugar molecules."

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/75129.php
"A new survey of US healthcare facilities suggests that nearly 5 per cent of patients carry Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, the superbug known as MRSA, putting the national prevalence at between 8 and 11 times more than previous estimates.According to its authors, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), the survey is the "largest and most comprehensive MRSA study of its kind," and the results showed that 46 out of every 1,000 patients "were either infected or colonized with MRSA".

French muck: Is this the new penicillin?http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/french-muck-is-this-the-new-penicillin-398141.html
MRSA is the scourge of the country's hospitals, but now the discovery in France of a volcanic clay with miraculous healing properties raises the prospect of a cure for it, and to other dangerous superbugs
Scientists have discovered a new and highly effective weapon against deadly superbugs like the MRSA sweeping through Britain's dirty hospital wards – green French muck.The dramatic antibiotic success of agricur, a clay made from ancient volcanic ash found near the Massif Central, marks it out as a potential rival to penicillin, the wonder drug of the 20th century. In experiments, the clay killed up to 99 per cent of superbug colonies within 24 hours. Control samples of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) grew 45-fold in the same period.

The clay has a similar effect on other deadly bacteria tested, including salmonella, E. coli, and a flesh-eating disease called buruli, a relative of leprosy which disfigures children across central and western Africa. It has been classed as "an emerging public health threat" by the World Health Organization (WHO).
"We have found several antibacterial clays," said Dr Williams, a mineralogist who is trying to work out the chemicals that make them special. "We have multiple working hypotheses. Our primary hypothesis is that the clay minerals transfer elements, not yet identified, to the bacteria that impede their metabolic function."It is entirely possible that it is not one single element that is toxic to the bacteria, but a combination of elements and chemical conditions that attack the bacteria from different angles so as to overwhelm their defence systems," she said.Another possibility, less likely but potentially more significant, is that the clays work through a physical rather than a biochemical process. In that case, bacteria might never develop resistance.

Clay has long been used as a health treatment in spas, but that is because it holds heat longer than water, and draws toxins out of the skin. Clay is also sometimes eaten as a folk remedy for nausea. "It's fascinating," said Dr Haydel, a microbiologist. "Here we are bridging geology, microbiology, cell biology. A year ago, I'd look at the clay and say, 'Well, that's dirt.'

Comment:Might be a good idea to do further research on Clays, natural antibiotics and other things that can still kill these new antibiotic resistant microbes. We are getting right back to the same problems we had before the age of 'modern medicine' where way too many people are dying from simple infections that become systemic.

But don't let it get you depressed ... here's a site that sells plush-toys of all your favorite deadly pathogens (and benign ones as well). Send one to your freshly amputated relatives .. I'm sure they'll laugh till their guts bleed! (~Miqel)

http://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/products/mrsa.html - MRSA Plushy Doll http://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/main/calamities/ - The Most Deadly Microbes as Cute Fluffy Dolls!From the site: "We make stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes—only a million times actual size! Now available: The Common Cold, The Flu, Sore Throat, Stomach Ache, Cough, Ear Ache, Bad Breath, Kissing Disease, Athlete's Foot, Ulcer, Martian Life, Beer & Bread, Black Death, Ebola, Flesh Eating, Sleeping Sickness, Dust Mite, Bed Bug, and Bookworm (and in our Professional line: H.I.V. and Hepatitis).
The Black Death has crippled civilization several times -- and Ebola haunts our imaginations. Sleeping Sickness seems like it's everywhere these days, and barbecues have gotten crazy. And while the modern world may have the upper-hand on big game, mother nature wants you to know that she can still eat you alive."

MORE BENEFITS OF 'GETTING DIRTY'

GETTING DIRTY IS HEALTHY, CURES DEPRESSIONFuck PROZAC - Go play in the mud once a week!!!

Getting dirty may lift Depression:
Bacteria found in the soil activated a group
of
neurons that produce the brain chemical serotoninhttp://www.anxietyinsights.info/getting_dirty_may_lift_depression.htm
Treatment of mice with a 'friendly' bacteria, normally found in the soil, altered their behavior in a way similar to that produced by antidepressant drugs, reports research published in the latest issue of Neuroscience.

These findings, identified by researchers at the University of Bristol and colleagues at University College London, aid the understanding of why an imbalance in the immune system leaves some individuals vulnerable to mood disorders like depression.

Dr Chris Lowry, lead author on the paper from Bristol University, said: "These studies help us understand how the body communicates with the brain and why a healthy immune system is important for maintaining mental health. They also leave us wondering if we shouldn't all be spending more time playing in the dirt."

Interest in the project arose after human cancer patients being treated with the bacteria Mycobacterium vaccae unexpectedly reported increases in their quality of life. Lowry and his colleagues reasoned that this effect could be caused by activation of neurons in the brain that contained serotonin.

Comment: I remember the old phrase "as happy as a pig in the mud' ... folk wisdom strikes again. It seems like I had way more fun on the years where it rained and became a slip-n-slide mudfest at Bonnaroo, now that i think about it. (~Miqel)

BBC Investigation: Bush’s Grandfather REALLY DID try
to overthrow the American Republic in an aborted 1933
FASCIST / BANKER COUP WHICH SUPPORTED
THE NAZIS!!! WEIRD but TRUE!

from BBC Documentaries
The Forgotten Attempted Fascist Coup in America in 1933http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtmlDocument uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen.
The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.
Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy. listen in Real Audio:http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/rams/document_20070723.ram

Wiki entry on coup, called “the Business Plot”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
“Details of the matter came to light when retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified before a Congressional committee that a group of men had attempted to recruit him to serve as the leader of a plot and to assume and wield power once the coup was successful. Butler testified before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee in 1934.

In his testimony, Butler claimed that a group of several men had approached him as part of a plot to overthrow Roosevelt in a military coup. One of the alleged plotters, Gerald MacGuire, vehemently denied any such plot. In their final report, the Congressional committee supported Butler's allegations on the existence of the plot, but no prosecutions or further investigations followed, and the matter was mostly forgotten.

Major General Butler claimed that
the
American Liberty League was
the
primary means of funding the plot.
The main backers werethe Du Pont family, as well as leaders of U.S. Steel, General Motors,
Standard Oil, Chase National Bank, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.

The BBC documentary "The Whitehouse Coup" alleges that Prescott Bush, father and grandfather to the 41st and 43rd US Presidents respectively, was also connected.” Portions of Butler's story were corroborated by:
- Veterans of Foreign Wars commander James E. Van Zandt. "Less than two months" after General Butler warned him, he said "he had been approached by 'agents of Wall Street' to lead a Fascist dictatorship in the United States under the guise of a 'Veterans Organization.' "
- Captain Samuel Glazier—testifying under oath about plans of a plot to install a dictatorship in the United States.
-Reporter Paul Comly French, reporter for the Philadelphia Record and the New York Evening Post.

Yet Another well researched article on the Fascist Business Plot ... at Damn Interesting http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=883
As a consequence of the Great Depression, the countryside was littered with unemployed, and the world's wealthy were watching as their fortunes deflated and their investments evaporated. As men of action, the well-financed New York group sought to eliminate what they reasoned to be the crux of the catastrophe: the United States government.

To assist them in their diabolical scheme, the resourceful plotters recruited the assistance of Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, a venerated, highly decorated, and considerably jaded former Marine. It was the conspirators' earnest hope that their army of 500,000 Great War veterans, under the leadership of General Butler, could overpower the US' feeble peacetime military and reconstitute the government as a more economical fascist dictatorship.
According to the plan, Roosevelt and other existing US leadership would be allowed to remain as figureheads, while the true policy-making power would fall to a new cabinet position which Smedley Butler would occupy: The Secretary for General Affairs.

In the autumn of 1934, General Smedley Butler finally sprang into action. A crowd of journalists surrounded him as he addressed the nation in a press conference. But the General did not demand the surrender of the United States government. Instead, he related to the reporters the details of the secret pro-fascist plot, and described the principal players. "The upshot of the whole thing," he explained, "was that I was supposed to lead an organization of five hundred thousand men which would be able to take over the functions of government." The Old Gimlet Eye, it turned out, had been playing along with Gerald MacGuire in order to glean information about the plot. Though Smedley Butler had indeed grown weary of being a government-sponsored "gangster for capitalism," he was still a true patriot..

Statement from TOP MILITARY LAWYER ASSIGNED TO REVIEW DETAINEE EVIDENCE

Declaration of Stephen Abraham -
Lieutenant Colonel, United States Army Reserve
I, Stephen Abraham, hereby declare as follows:
1. I am a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Reserve, having been commissioned in 1981 as an officer in Intelligence Corps. I have served as an intelligence officer from 1982 to the present during periods of both reserve and active duty, including mobilization in 1990 (“Operation Desert Storm”) and twice again following 9-11. In my civilian occupation, I am an attorney with the law firm Fink & Abraham LLP in Newport Beach, California.

2.This declaration is limited to unclassified matters specifically related to the procedures employed by Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants (“OARDEC”) and the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (“CSRTs”) rather than to any specific information gathered or used in a particular case, except as noted herein. The contents of this declaration are based solely on my personal observations and experiences as a member of OARDEC.
While assigned to OARDEC, in addition to other duties, I worked as an agency liaison, responsible for coordinating with government agencies, including certain Department of Defense (“DoD”) and non-DoD organizations, to gather or validate information relating to detainees for use in CSRTs. I also served as a member of a CSRT, and had the opportunity to observe and participate in the operation of the CSRT process.
5. As stated in the McGarrah Dec., the information comprising the Government Information and the Government Evidence was not compiled personally by the CSRT Recorder, but by other individuals in OARDEC. The vast majority of the personnel assigned to OARDEC were reserve officers from the different branches of service (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines) of varying grades and levels of general military experience. Few had any experience or training in the legal or intelligence fields.

6. The Recorders of the tribunals were typically relatively junior officers with little training or experience in matters relating to the collection, processing, analyzing, and/or dissemination of intelligence material. In no instances known to me did any of the Recorders have any significant personal experience in the field of military intelligence. Similarly, I was unaware of any Recorder having any significant or relevant experience dealing with the agencies providing information to be used as a part of the CSRT process.

8. The information used to prepare the files to be used by the Recorders frequently consisted of finished intelligence products of a generalized nature - often outdated, often “generic,” rarely specifically relating to the individual subjects of the CSRTs or to the circumstances related to those individuals’ status.

10. As one of only a few intelligence-trained and suitably cleared officers, I served as a liaison while assigned to OARDEC, acting as a go-between for OARDEC and various intelligence organizations. In that capacity, I was tasked to review and/or obtain information relating to individual subjects of the CSRTs. More specifically, I was asked to confirm and represent in a statement to be relied upon by the CSRT board members that the organizations did not possess “exculpatory information” relating to the subject of the CSRT.

11. During my trips to the participating organizations, I was allowed only limited access to information, typically prescreened and filtered. I was not permitted to see any information other than that specifically prepared in advance of my visit. I was not permitted to request thiv be performed. I was given no assurances that the information provided for my examination represented a complete compilation of information or that any summary of information constituted an accurate distillation of the body of available information relating to the subject.

16.The content of intelligence products, including databases, made available to case writers, Recorders, or liaison officers, was often left entirely to the discretion of the organizations providing the information. What information was not included in the bodies of intelligence products was typically unknown to the case writers and Recorders, as was the basis for limiting the information.

17. Often, information that was gathered was discarded by the case writer or the Recorder because it was considered to be ambiguous, confusing, or poorly written. Such a determination was frequently the result of the case writer or Recorder’s lack of training or experience with the types of information provided. In my observation, the case writer or Recorder, without proper experience or a basis for giving context to information, often rejected some information arbitrarily while accepting other information without any articulable rationale.
On one occasion, I was assigned to a CSRT panel with two other officers, an Air Force colonel and an Air Force major, the latter understood by me to be a judge advocate. We reviewed evidence presented to us regarding the recommended status of a detainee. All of us found the information presented to lack substance.

22. What were purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence. Statements allegedly made by percipient witnesses lacked detail. Reports presented generalized statements in indirect and passive forms without stating the source of the information or providing a basis for establishing the reliability or the credibility of the source. Statements of interrogators presented to the panel offered inferences from which we were expected to draw conclusions favoring a finding of “enemy combatant” but that, upon even limited questioning from the panel, yielded the response from the Recorder, “We’ll have to get back to you.” The personal representative did not participate in any meaningful way.

23. On the basis of the paucity and weakness of the information provided both during and after the CSRT hearing, we determined that there was no factual basis for concluding that the individual should be classified as an enemy combatant. Rear Admiral McGarrah and the Deputy Director immediately questioned the validity of our findings. They directed us to write out the specific questions that we had raised concerning the evidence to allow the Recorder an opportunity to provide further responses. We were then ordered to reopen the hearing to allow the Recorder to present further argument as to why the detainee should be classified as an enemy combatant. (Court Statement contineud
HERE )

"My parents went to the X-Day Drill and all I got was this lousy chip at the base of my skull." (from a Subgenius T-Shirt)

Copyright
InformationThe
information here is gleaned from various websites, including
this.
Some of the content is probably copyrighted, but we’re
not selling any of it or showing any advertising on this site.
The information is for personal use only, it’s the one
copy we can have and we just happen to have it on this website.

Much material found on this site is copyrighted by
its original publisher.
It is reprinted by miqel.com without permission, solely for
purposes of criticism,
comment, and news reporting, in accordance with the Fair Use
Guidelines
of copyright material under § 107 of U.S.C. Title 17:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the
fair use of a copyrighted work,
including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords
or by any other means specified by that section,
for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching
(including multiple copies for classroom use),
scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
In determining whether the use made of a work in any
particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered
shall include— (1) the purpose and character of the
use,
including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is
for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation
to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or
value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a
finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration
of all the above factors.